15 times The X-Files’ Dana Scully was the best character on TV

14. She might actually be immortal

This is one theory that’s really out there, to be sure. Still, there’s a decent amount of evidence to back this up.

The idea first got traction in “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose,” starring Peter Boyle as Bruckman. Poor, sad sack Clyde is psychic, but only in a limited sense: he can see everyone’s inevitable death. He turns it into a living as a creepy life insurance salesman, but it does nothing to lift his mood.

When Bruckman crosses paths with the two FBI agents, he first warns Mulder of the dangers associated with his private inclinations. “You know, there are worse ways to go,” says Bruckman, “but I can’t think of a more undignified way than autoerotic asphyxiation.” But, when Scully asks him how she will die, he says: “You don’t.”

“Clyde Bruckman” writer Darin Morgan said that he didn’t intend the line to be taken seriously. However, it’s become a persistent rumor within the fandom and the show itself. In the sixth season episode “Monday,” Scully gets stuck in a time loop in which she dies in a bank robbery, over and over. The loop finally resets when she survives.

Some fans argue that the time loop is caused by her inability to die—the timeline must “try again” until Scully makes it out alive and the rightful order of things is restored. Earlier in that season, in the episode “Tithonus,” Scully may have ensured her deathless nature by looking away from death itself.

Even the big names of The X-Files might buy into the idea. In a Reddit AMA, show creator Chris Carter argued in favor of Scully’s immortality, writing that “it said so right in the show.”